The constraints of youth: young people, active citizenship and the experience of marginalisation

ABSTRACT

This paper charts the experiences of a group of young people and their involvement in a local government initiative to engage young people in public decision-making. Activated through a youth leaders’ council that sought to influence and inform local government decision-making, the participating young people were given responsibility for enacting focus projects in collaboration with local government personnel. However, this method of simply bringing young people together with local government decision-makers did not automatically alter the way that decisions came to be made and ironically resulted in interactions that went some way to further reinforce existing perceptions of young people as incapable in situations of public administration. This paper reports on a case example detailing an interaction between the youth leaders and local government councillors, and will suggest that the experience of the young people involved in the youth leaders’ council can be understood against a dynamic of ‘constraint’.

KEYWORDS:

• Active citizenship
• constraint
• young people
• youth leaders
• youth council
• local government

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Andrew Hickey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9862-6444

Notes

1 We use the term ‘institutional’ to denote the array of formal local governmental expectations attached to personal conduct, modes of professionalism and effective practice that the young people were expected to uphold as ‘youth leaders’.

2 Both authors have been members of the accompanying forum attached to the youth leaders’ council – the Youth Advisory Committee. This committee contained membership of elected councillors, local government bureaucrats and community and youth service providers to act as an advisory group to assist the youth council to enact initiatives.

3 As expressed in terms of previous experience in navigating the workings of local government bureaucracy.